1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for controlling a VoIP communication, and more particularly, to a technology for controlling the number of connections to a VoIP communication making use of a wireless LAN.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as a wireless LAN has become widespread, an opportunity for carrying out a real time communication such as a VoIP (Voice Over IP) communication and the like through the wireless LAN has increased.
As a technology for controlling a communication through the wireless LAN, there is a technology disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-124939 which discloses a system for a plurality of client's computers to carry out a wireless communication through one access point apparatus. The access point apparatus of the system restricts the number of connections of client's computers by registering the MAC addresses of the client's computers which request the access point apparatus to be connected to them. When there are requests for connection exceeding the upper limit of the number of connections, the access point apparatus retries a registration processing until a registration possible state is established again.
The method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-124939 improves the communication performance of the system by restricting the number of connections of the client's computers. However, when requests for connection exceeding the upper limit of connection are issued, the access point apparatus continuously retries the registration processing until a space for registration becomes available. Thus, in the above method, it is difficult to reduce the load applied to the access point apparatus. In particular, when the access point apparatus receives a plurality of requests for connection in a state that the upper limit of connection is exceeded, the access point apparatus becomes overloaded with a result that communication quality is deteriorated. Further, since clients must wait while the access point apparatus continuously makes the retry, there is also a disadvantage in that user-friendliness is lost.
Accordingly, an object of present invention, which was made to overcome the above problems, is to provide a technology for effectively controlling the connection of a VoIP communication in a wireless LAN system.